Business Development Lead

Applications will be reviewed on a rolling basis, and we intend to appoint as soon as the right candidate is found. We encourage early applications.

About the Role

Suru Partners is a boutique professional services firm dedicated to empowering the charity and non-profit sector through expert technical consultancy. We are seeking an exceptional Business Development Lead to take full ownership of the agency’s sales, marketing, positioning, and strategic partnerships. Reporting directly to the Directors, you will work as a key member of our senior team, collaborating closely with leadership and our senior consultants to elevate Suru’s visibility and drive mission-aligned growth across the sector.

You’ll have the option to work from our Coventry office full-time, or a blend of office-based and remote working as suits you.

Why this job?

• Mission-critical impact: Our customers are all charities and NGOs—you’ll get to build your career while having a genuinely positive impact on the world.
• Relationship over transaction: We prioritise depth over breadth. You’ll be encouraged to find the right fit for the business, rather than just hitting a sales quota.
• Ownership: This role will lead our customer engagement and marketing strategy, with the freedom to shape how Suru tells its story to the sector.
• Consultative & creative: Suru doesn’t sell the same product over and over. You’ll spend your time listening to prospects, decoding their challenges and collaborating with our consultants — some of the top in the industry — to creatively form solution proposals.

Responsibilities

• Marketing strategy & execution: You will proactively work to increase Suru’s visibility and recognition across the sector. Your goal is to move Suru from being a "best-kept secret" to a recognised authority and sought-after partner for non-profits. You'll design and own our marketing strategy that sells results, not just skills. You'll coordinate the execution of that strategy, partly yourself and partly with internal and external resources. You’ll oversee case studies and digital content that reflect our specific technical prowess.
• Networking & public voice: You will be a voice for Suru in key networking spaces and forums, building genuine connections with charity leaders and stakeholders. You will actively look for opportunities for yourself or our key staff members to be a voice in the non-profit space, whether through speaking engagements, panel discussions, or high-level networking. You will ensure our voice is heard within the sector, whether that be in-person or digitally through professional online networks (e.g. LinkedIn).
• Own & expand the pipeline: You’ll be responsible for both the growth and health of our sales pipeline—from active lead generation, both with existing clients and identifying new prospects, to managing initial enquiries and qualifying prospects against budget, authority, need, timeline and values.  You will ensure our potential customers have a great experience, including meeting prospect-imposed timelines (eg. RFPs). You will manage effectively the information within our systems relating to sales activity so that everyone involved has up-to-date information to hand.
• Consultative discovery: You will lead initial sales calls and discovery sessions to build genuine rapport with prospects. You will be responsible for uncovering not just their technical requirements, but their underlying motivations and pain points—identifying the "unsaid" factors that will allow them to say 'yes' to a long-term partnership with Suru. You'll know when to bring in technical specialists in Suru to support sales calls.
• Proposal & pitches: You’ll lead the creation of high-quality, narrative-driven proposals, ranging from short one-page documents to rich in-depth formal proposals (eg. RFP responses). You’ll collaborate with our senior technical team to translate "tech-speak" into client empathy and clear commercial value.
• Vendor & partner relationships: You'll co-manage our strategic relationships with key partners such as SaaS vendors and other agencies, developing and maintaining these relationships to ensure we remain a "partner of choice" and stay aligned with their roadmaps. You will conduct effective co-selling of deals (eg. where Suru is an implementing partner with a SaaS vendor such as Beacon or Salesforce) and find promotional opportunities with these vendors and other aligned professionals.
• Capacity gatekeeping: You’ll act as a bridge to our delivery team, matching our sales pipeline to real-time capacity planning to ensure we can deliver what we sell without burning out the team.

Person Requirements

• Technical fluency: You can pivot between strategic board discussions and technical sessions with developers. You translate complex risks into business impact and are equally comfortable talking donor strategy with a CEO, product strategy with a COO or data schema with a CTO.
• Solution mindset: You understand how CRMs, apps, APIs, cloud architecture, and integrations fit together. This allows you to spot viable solutions in a first meeting and understand the "art of the possible" without needing a developer in the room.
• Filtering: You identify "good fit" projects early. You can lead technical discovery and draft proposals that our delivery team can actually execute, ensuring we never over-promise.
• Relational credibility: Trust in this sector is built on competence and understanding. You offer genuine empathy for client challenges and can contextualise technical solutions in real time to help prospects understand the problems they're facing and the benefits Suru's solutions deliver, and uncover what really motivates them.
• Ethos alignment: We work with many faith-based nonprofits. You are respectful of, and comfortable in, environments where Christian values guide decision-making, and you understand the specific language of the UK Church landscape.
• Experience: 5+ years in sales, marketing or account management within professional services or tech.
• Operational discipline: You are process-driven and highly organised. You enjoy managing multiple moving parts and ensure no lead ever goes cold.

Benefits & Working Culture at Suru

We look after our team and ensure our policies reflect the value we place on every member of Suru Partners. Our benefits package is designed to support your health, your long-term financial security, and a healthy work-life balance.

• Annual Leave: You will receive 35 working days of paid leave per year, inclusive of public Bank Holidays.
• Private Health Cover: We provide private health insurance for all staff members.
• Enhanced Pension Matching: Suru will match 100% of your pension contributions up to a maximum of 10% of your qualifying earnings.
• Birthday Leave: Take your birthday off as an extra paid day of leave.
• Holiday Purchase Scheme:  buy up to 10 additional days of annual leave per year (after 12 months of employment).
• Hybrid Working: We expect all staff to work a minimum of two full working days in the office each week at our Coventry location.

What’s it like at Suru?

Suru Partners is a specialist technology consulting, app development and CRM consultancy. We are a small, close-knit team based in Coventry, working with medium-to-large charities and non-profits across the UK and overseas. We are driven by the tangible impact our technical expertise has on our clients' missions.

As our Head of Partnerships, you won't just be an observer of this work; you will be its primary advocate. You will work directly with our company directors and our senior technical team to translate complex charity challenges into meaningful solutions. Your day-to-day will involve high-level networking and being a vocal authority for Suru in the non-profit space, ensuring we are visible and recognised where it matters most.

You will be the "human bridge" within our team—collaborating with our CRM consultants and developers to ensure that the promises we make in our proposals are technically sound and grounded in reality. You will hold the context for multiple relationships and proposals simultaneously, acting as a strategic gatekeeper to ensure our delivery team is empowered to do their best work without being over-stretched.

“I really enjoy working for Suru Partners. There is a great team dynamic, varied work and a good management structure giving a clear chain of command. This provides a good balance of autonomy and accountability, giving me high job satisfaction.” — John, CRM Team Lead

“The best thing about working with Suru Partners is that no two projects are the same. This keeps the workflow both interesting and challenging. All team members have a voice and are free to express opinions and ideas when bringing solutions to the table, regardless of their role. In addition, there is a vast opportunity to learn and develop skills on the job.” — Thomas, Senior Developer